


now we are one in everlasting peace

by nuclearmuffins



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: All That Remains, Angst, F/M, Family Feels, I'm Sorry, Tragedy, mild body horror, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-11-02 08:57:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20691716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearmuffins/pseuds/nuclearmuffins
Summary: "And then Revka Amell, Gamlen's cousin, learned that her firstborn was a mage. The child was taken to the Circle, Revka weeping in the streets behind the templars."Or, the Amell children are taken one by one, their mother wastes away, and their father is desperate to bring them all together again.





	now we are one in everlasting peace

They come to take his oldest boy first.

It’s like they take some sort of sick pleasure in the act as the templars drag out all the family at dawn and in slithering cold cruelty, they tell them where they will be taking Robin. They are horribly calm as they commit the worst evil he can think of, and all he can think is  _ how many families have they done this to before? How many children have they ripped away to never be seen again? _

They have just begun to walk Robin away before Revka breaks. 

“YOU WON’T TAKE HIM! I WON’T LET- YOU SICK FUCKING BASTARDS-”

A string of obscenities tumble out of his wife’s mouth, most improper for her station and breeding, but she has lost all care. She claws, nails scraping against templar steel as she lashes out. Her hands bleed. He can’t bear to see her hurt like this, so he pulls her back, and he feels her struggle against him until every part of her stills except her still-screaming lips.

Revka tries to free herself from his grasp, but he only grips tighter. Her nails dig into his skin and he can feel the blood beginning to drip down beneath her sharpened talons. She does not care that he is her husband, that he is only trying to keep her from getting hurt. It’s their boy, their first, their  _ eldest _ , and she does not care about anything else. 

He does not show it, but he too is a furious hurricane of emotion inside. His gritted teeth and the rapidly breaking wife within his arms is the only thing holding him back from doing something he will regret.

As his wife howls and screams their son’s name and Robin anguishedly calls back “Mother! Father!” he feels it calling inside him. A pull, clawing on the edges of his consciousness, restless and begging to be let out. He had given it up at the altar as he had pulled back the bridal veil and made his vows to the Maker… but there is still a shined knife at his hip, easily accessible, always calling to him. 

He  _ could. _ A simple slash of his palm, a summons of the power dwelling within his blood, and they would all come to regret it.

But there are still the rest of his children to think about. Deryn, petrified in her place as they take her brother away; Solona’s tiny face starting to contort in a fury mirroring her mother’s; Daylen sobbing into his stuffed bear; and Dove, only a few months old, sleeping soundly in the nursery upstairs with the nanny with not a hint of knowledge of what is going on with the rest of her family, blissfully unaware of her oldest brother being snatched away from them.

He is furious with the templars, but more so himself.  _ I couldn’t protect him. My son, my eldest boy, and I couldn’t protect him. _

Eventually, the templars come for them all. One by one, over the next five years, until their house is left cold and empty, bereft of the laughter of children for good. 

They come for Deryn on a fine sunny day, with nary a cloud in the sky even as the storm rages further on in his heart. She struggles and even through his haze of fury and grief he is proud of her. She kicks, screams, howls; his little wolf, fighting to the last. But the fight leaves her, little by little, as she realizes there is no chance for her, even as her mother tries to reach for her. There is no kicking and screaming from her as she leaves, but Revka is more than happy to pick up the slack.

They come for the twins on the same day; Solona and Daylen came into this world together and for the first time they will be ripped apart, tossed into separate jails without a care for their wellbeing. Solona fights for her twin, shouts his name over the din, and punches, little fists beating against steel until they go blue and black all over and they force her to the ground. He can taste the lyrium from here, forced into his mouth like a clamp over his throat, and he can only imagine what it feels like for his little girl. 

Daylen, in contrast, is resigned. He has always been the quieter of the boys, the shy, retiring; if there had been no chance of any of his older siblings breaking free he knows there will be none for him. He knows his son like the back of his hand, and as much as he wants to scream for him to fight with all he can, he knows it is hopeless. After they force Solona to the ground they look to Daylen and he goes without a breath of complaint. He wants to fight in his son’s stead even as it knows it is a lost cause. But cowardice takes over, and he is silent.

Dove, his sweet little Dove, is all of five when they take her, and her gentle heart is too young to know what’s going on. By this time Revka has stopped struggling when their children are taken away one by one. She does not claw, she does not bite, she does not scratch. When Dove’s fists are slowly pried away from clutching the hem of her skirt she merely collapses into the ground, a childless mother, lost to her wailing.

He is useless as he listens to his wife's anguish, as he fails in his duty as a father, again and again.

As their children are taken away from them and their family crumbles, so too does the rest of the Amell clan. Revka’s aunt and uncle follow each other to the grave, and then her brother is accused of smuggling. Her father drains away the family’s fortune trying to save him, but when that failed, Fausten Amell wastes away with all the money they had left.

Revka follows in her father’s footsteps and begins to waste away too. To tell the truth, it had really begun with the day Robin had been ripped away from them, but now she truly is nothing. Her hair, her lovely chestnut hair with the sheen of spun gold lies lank and dull; the pearlescent shine gone from her eyes. She ages twenty years in the span of five and he is helpless to watch.

The week after Dove is stolen from them he wakes next to her as usual in their bed. But when he goes to kiss her morning, as habitual for him, he realizes her skin is as cold as ice. He frantically strips away their sheets, fingers rushing for her wrist and ear jammed against her chest. 

“Revka,” his voice is a whisper at first, but then it becomes a yell. “Revka! No, no, you can’t- you can’t leave me too-”

When the creditors come for the house, they find him there, his tear-sodden cheek still pressed against hers, lips brushing against hers whispering a plea for her to wake up,  _ wake up _ ,  _ our children still need you, you can’t leave me alone here- _

Then they drag him away kicking and screaming, just as she had done for Robin, and they toss him bodily onto the street with only the clothes on his back and his screams of anguish to accompany him.

He hears them say he is mad. He cannot recognize a desiccated corpse for what it is, too tangled up in the grief of losing five children and then his wife.  _ Quentin Amell, gone insane all alone in that old house. _

He does not know what they do with her. All he knows when he sneaks back into the estate some days later, barely holding onto the will to cling onto life, she is gone; their bed is empty, the rooms silent and bare, and all that replies when he shouts out her name and the names of their children are echoes. Echoes that return to him and pierce his heart as javelins through his chest.

Now the old song. It sings, sings in his veins; not birdsong or Chantry choirs but screeching, high and atonal and dissonant like an anguished prisoner demanding to be freed. He cannot stop it now. It is not so much an urge as a  _ command _ now, forcing itself free out of the prison of his blood vessels, jumping out of his ribcage.

Her portrait still hangs in the dining room. There she is, in all her youthful glory: her beautiful chestnut hair, that of the Amell's, is braided into a crown around her head; her piercing blue eyes smile with her curved lips, so he can almost hear her clarion laughter.

The templars stole away that laugh as they had stolen away all their children. 

_ “I swear, my love,” _ he whispers as he pulls her portrait off the wall,  _ “we will be together again. We will have our family back, all our beautiful, smiling children back. I swear it.  _ ** _I swear it._ ** _ ” _

He lets the calling of his blood take him.

Kirkwall is filled with women nobody will miss. He is sloppy a few times, almost caught, but he cannot resist those hands, those pure, lily-white hands, so much like the ones that had brushed the hair away from his face and caressed his cheek. 

It is not Revka’s face he stares into at the end of it all, but it is close enough that he can already taste the honey on his lips when he brushes his mouth to hers. A cousin of hers, he thinks; he has watched her from afar for years, and when he had his chance, he took it. Anything for her. Anything for their children. They would be a  _ family _ again.

When he finishes the stitches, he feels he could almost burst with anticipation as the knife slices across his palm, and with the drops of blood falling to the ground, he commands her to turn towards him. As her eyes open to reveal the piercing Amell blue, his heart hums.  _ Revka. My love. You have come back to me. _

Footsteps clatter outside, and he knows who it is.  _ The daughter. Leandra had said something to the effect. _

His lips brush against her temple as he whispers against her porcelain skin.  _ “She will not take you from me, I swear it. I will let nobody take any of our family away from us ever again.” _

He rises slowly as the footsteps halt just a short distance away. “I was wondering when you’d show up. Leandra was so sure you’d come for her,” he does not turn quite yet, but a smile teased his lips, more than a hint of his old, youthful arrogance coming into his voice. Leandra had spat those words into his face before he had carved her head off her shoulders.  _ She did not think about what purpose she was serving, what she would be doing for the Amells, her own kin. Such an insolent woman. _

A young woman’s voice responds, steely, but wavering, with venom edging her words. “Where is she? Where is my mother?”

“You will never understand my purpose. Your mother was chosen because she was special.” _Those delicate cheekbones, that high, straight nose; not quite Revka, but close enough_. “And now she is part of something… greater.” His heart feels like it will pound out of his chest. _One step closer to bringing our family together again._

“You’re crazy! I get it! Now,  _ where is my mother?”  _

His smile grows wider as he calls upon the blood bond that ties them together, exactly as the vows they made to the Maker ties them together. “I have done the impossible. I have touched the face of the Maker and lived.”  _ I have taken her back from the people who stole her from me, from the jaws of death itself; if I can do that, I will have all of them back. Robin, Deryn, Solona, Daylen, Dove... _

With the blood bond that ties them together, he beckons Revka to stand. “Do you know what the strongest force in the universe is?  _ Love.  _ I pieced her together from memory. I found her eyes, her skin, her delicate fingers. And at last, her face. Her beautiful face,” it falls from his mouth as a sigh, as he gazes again at his beloved, returned to him at last, at  _ long last. _

At last he turns to greet his unwelcome guest, but what he sees unmoors him from his unbridled glee.

_ Deryn. _

The cold logic that fueled his study for the past decade knows instinctively it is not his daughter, but the wellspring of grief and longing that drove him to bring his wife back cannot help but think of his little girl. He has done it so many times, imagined what his little girl would look like all grown up, and the vision stares back at him; milk-and-honey skin dotted with beauty marks, cascades of brown hair, striking dark eyes. 

But one part of her does not fit with his vision - the way she looks back at him with such _hate._ _No. No, this is not how it was supposed to be; Deryn, it’s your father, your mother’s here too, we can be all together again, we just need your siblings, oh Deryn-my-Deryn -_

The young woman who is not Deryn balls a fist of yellow light in her hand. “You killed my mother, you fucking bastard!”

He is unprepared for the force that suddenly slams into him from Maura Hawke’s will, throwing him to the ground; the hand that would have reached for the dagger is pinned to the ground as he feels the heat lick against his flesh, searing him. As his consciousness fades from him, he can see them - there is Robin, with his easy smile; Deryn, with love in her eyes reserved only for him; his twins, Solona and Daylen, standing side-by-side together again; his little Dove, ready to jump into his arms.

And finally there is Revka - not the imperfect version he tried to create, but her,  _ her _ , as fresh-faced and  _ alive _ as the day they had wed, not even the wasted version she had been in her last days.  _ I fulfilled my promise. _

Even as the fire at last swallows him, his lips, melting from his flesh, curl into a phantom smile.  _ We are together at last. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I just love this dumb HC so much, then my Discord buddies all enabled me, and look where we are now.
> 
> Thank you to Kalan (roflskate) for helping me with the title!
> 
> Title from Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead.


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